Italian parliament elects pro-Putin Eurosceptic as speaker

Italy’s Parliament has elected a Eurosceptic admirer of Russian president Vladimir Putin as its new speaker, stoking recent considerations about Italy’s international coverage route beneath a brand new rightwing authorities.

Lorenzo Fontana, a detailed ally of Matteo Salvini in his populist League occasion who opposes homosexuality, was elected speaker with 222 votes, paving the best way for Giorgia Meloni’s fractious three-party rightwing coalition that received September’s election to maneuver forward with forming a authorities.

Analysts mentioned Fontana’s election as speaker — the third strongest place in Italian politics after the president and Senate speaker — is a reminder of the persevering with energy and affect of the pro-Russia wing of Salvini’s League, on which the steadiness of the brand new authorities will rely.

Meloni, who is predicted to be requested by president Sergio Mattarella to turn into the brand new prime minister, has vigorously denounced Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and pledged Italy’s persevering with assist for Kyiv. However in the course of the election marketing campaign, Salvini overtly complained concerning the heavy value that Italians had been paying for the financial sanctions towards Russia, highlighting the tensions inside the rightwing alliance.

Doubts about whether or not the brand new authorities’s capability and dedication to proceed the course adopted by Draghi — who has been on the forefront of the robust European response to the invasion of Ukraine — will probably be amplified by Fontana’s election.

“It’s a really nasty sign,” mentioned Francesco Galietti, founding father of Coverage Sonar, a Rome-based political threat consultancy. “For all Meloni’s effort to place herself as a staunch Atlanticist, she will not be absolutely in management. We’ve the third senior rating determine in Italy’s institutional hierarchy who’s a Moscow poodle.”

The deeply conservative Fontana, who is understood for his strident opposition to homosexuality and migration and as soon as hailed Brexit as “the beginning of a brand new period” that would remodel the EU, has known as Putin’s Russia a “mannequin” society, describing it as “a shining gentle, even for us within the west”.

In 2014, Fontana travelled to Crimea as an election observer to supervise Russia’s referendum to annex the occupied peninsula, and has repeatedly denounced EU sanctions towards Moscow, Later that 12 months he wore a t-shirt within the European parliament with the slogan “no sanctions towards Russia”.

“The Crimean folks really feel they’ve returned to their motherland — the EU ought to take a step again on sanctions towards Russia,” he declared.

Fontana has mentioned little about Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, which has brought about widespread revulsion in Italy. However in June he questioned the financial sanctions towards Russia, telling a newspaper interviewer that Russians had been extra seemingly to have the ability to endure the sanctions than western societies.

“The Russian individuals are traditionally accustomed to difficulties — extra used to it than the west,” he was quoted as saying. “I wouldn’t need them to have the ability to get via tough instances higher than us”.

Forward of the vote in parliament Friday, members of opposition events held up a banner in parliament saying: “No to a homophobic, pro-Putin speaker.”

The vote got here a day after Ignazio Benito La Russa — a collector of fascist memorabilia who lately described all Italians ‘heirs of Il Duce,’ the fascist dictator Benito Mussolini — turned president of the Senate, or higher home of parliament.